Sure, there must be times when ~everyone is available to talk. But otherwise, just let people work when they're ready to work. And let them self report their work time.
That's why "Busyness" and "Butts in Seat Per Hour" are seen as proxy for productivity. That's also why politics play such a big role.
Until we find a GOOD way to measure productivity, Control and "Busyness" (the illusion of productivity) is unfortunately not going to go away.
I thought to myself: "what if that was the etymology of the word, how ironic".
https://www.google.com/search?q=etymology+business
Oh wow.
This conflicts with the much, much stronger profit motive.
Employers can still calculate "profit per worker hour". And it's arguably more accurate when based on reported work time, rather than just days worked.
It is not. It's specifically used because of the utility in the simplest tasks. Factories are designed around throughput and efficiency of workers.
You say that salaried people aren't paid by the hour, but that's arguably a fiction. There's always a defined work day. Some employees end up "working" for inordinate amounts of time. And some employers do push employees to be more productive.
So if the standard is 40 hours per week, I'm just saying that you do the work whenever, not eight continuous hours per day, for five days per week. That decreases control of employees by employers.
The way it works is similar to attitudes toward remote work (until a few months ago): barriers help people waste time and get away with stuff.
Control is not all about what an authority can do (which is actually the least efficient form of control), it's also about what other people are prevented from doing, sometimes structurally so, as in the context of office layout and design.